“Another six days’ work is done,
Another Sabbath is begun;
Return, my soul, enjoy thy rest—
Improve the day thy God has blessed.”
Abner then spoke at some length on various passages from Ephesians, chapter 3: “ ‘For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,… That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye … might be filled with all the fullness of God.’ ” He pointed out that the family of love within which they lived was open to all who were willing to confess their sins and work toward a state of grace. He was obviously preaching to two audiences: his brother missionaries, to remind them of the family within which they operated; and the eavesdropping sailors, tempting them to join this family of Christ; but his message to the latter was somewhat destroyed when Jerusha, experiencing a dreadful wave of nausea, tried to stagger to the railing, failed, fell on her knees and vomited over the deck.
“Watch out, lady!” a sailor called derisively, but Cridland and Mason, the two young men who were to get Bibles that day, quickly jumped forward, caught Jerusha by the arms and carried her below. Abner, infuriated at the disruption of his charge to the sailors, concluded his sermon in rather a jumble, and turned the prayer over to an associate. He was confused and angry, because he had arranged the entire service so that it would end dramatically with his presentation of the Bibles to Cridland and his friend, thus symbolically welcoming them into the Lord’s family, but when the time had come to do this, those two were below decks, and Abner was painfully aware that his first major effort had ended like that of so many ministers: looking for a logical place to stop. Finally he had just quit.
When service ended, members of the family made a pretense of commending Abner for his sermon, but both the extenders of congratulations and the recipient knew that they were hollow. In an unruly fit of temper and disappointment, Abner started to go below, but he was met at the top of the hatchway by Cridland and Mason, who reported, “Your wife is very sick, sir.”
“Thank you,” he replied curtly.
“The minister who got sick first is helping her,” Cridland said.
Abner started down but Mason stopped him and asked, “Have you our Bibles, sir?”
“Next week,” Abner snapped, and was gone. But when he saw his wife, and how ashen white she was, he forgot his own problems and fetched water to wash her perspiring face.
“I’m sorry, my cherished partner,” she said wanly. “I’ll never make a sailor.”
“We’ll get you above decks just a few minutes each day,” he said reassuringly, but even the thought of facing that slanting deck again brought back her nausea, and she said, “I’m going to weigh even less than Captain Janders predicted.”
At noon, when the day’s big meal was served, Janders saw with pleasure that seventeen of his passengers were at last able to eat. “On each trip,” he observed, “as we approach Cape Verde, our sick ones get better.”
“Shall we be stopping at the islands?” John Whipple asked.
“Yes, if weather permits.” The news was so good that Abner rose from his pork-and-suet pudding and called into any staterooms where sick missionaries lay, “We’ll soon be touching at Cape Verde. Then you can walk about on land and get fresh fruit.”
“By the way, Reverend Hale,” the captain added, “that was a good sermon you preached today. There is indeed a heritage that the Lord provides those who serve Him, and may we all come into it.” The missionaries nodded their approval of this sentiment, whereupon Janders launched his harpoon: “Seems to me your message got a little tangled up at the end.”
Since all knew this to be true, they looked at their plates and thought: “Our captain is a clever man.” But Abner looked at him boldly and said, “I count a sermon a success if it contains one good Christian thought in it.”
“I do too,” Janders said heartily. “Yours had several.”
“I hope we can all take them to mind,” Abner said piously, but secretly he wished that services could have ended as planned. Then the ship would have heard a sermon.
After lunch Captain Janders invited the missionaries to tour the ship with him, and John Whipple asked, “I don’t understand why, if we’re bound west for Hawaii, we sail east almost to the coast of Africa.”
“Mister Collins, break us out a chart!” And Janders showed the surprised missionaries how it was that ships wanting to double Cape Horn sailed from Boston on a heading which took them not south for the Horn but far to the east, almost to the coast of Africa. “It’s so that when we finally turn south for the Horn, we can run in one straight line, down past Brazil and Argentine, straight on to Tierra del Fuego,” Janders explained, and the chart made this clear.
“Are the Cape Verde islands pleasant?” Whipple asked.
“You watch! Some of our boys jump ship there on every trip. We’ll be leaving Verde with a couple of Brava boys as replacements.”
While the captain was explaining these things, Abner was on another part of the deck talking seriously with Cridland and Mason. “I did not give you your Bibles today because you did not earn them,” he chided.
“But we had to take Mrs. Hale below decks,” Cridland protested.
“The work of the Lord required you to be present topside,” Abner said stubbornly.
“But she …”
“Others could have cared for her, Cridland. Next Sunday I shall give you your Bibles. I am going to preach from Psalms 26, verse 5: ‘I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked.’ When I have finished my sermon, I shall hand each of you his Bible.” Then he recalled what he had said earlier and, staring at Mason, asked, “But have you earned your Bible? I thought you were to have brought another soul to God.”
“I am about to do so,” Mason reported happily. “I have been reading the tracts you gave us to one of the older men. He had led an evil life, but last trip on a whaler he was swept overboard and was saved only by a miracle. Of late, he has been weeping very much and I shall keep talking with him. Perhaps by next Sabbath …”
“Good work, Mason,” Abner replied, and although another might have thought it strange that the religious ardors of the two sailors were not dampened by their disappointment over the Bibles, particularly when their dereliction arose from their humane treatment of a woman, and she the wife of the minister himself, Abner Hale was not surprised. As he pointed out to the young men: “The Lord is a jealous master. You cannot approach Him at your determination. He tells you when you may come into His presence. And if you have been faithless in even small things, the Lord will wait until you have proved yourself worthy.” For Abner knew that easy salvation was never appreciated; Cridland and Mason already treasured their forthcoming Bibles doubly because they had once failed to attain them.
If Abner’s first Sunday sermon was something of a failure, his second was a stunning success, marred only by the fact that his wife Jerusha was unable to witness it. He had got her to breakfast, had forced a little cold pork and rice into her racked body, and had even carried her limply onto the deck, but one look at the wallowing waves put her stomach into gyrations, and she was hurriedly taken below by Amanda Whipple and Mrs. Quigley. The intellectual highlight of Abner’s sermon came when he spent fifteen minutes on the congregation of evildoers that the devil had thrown together aboard the “hamferdite” brig Thetis. Like all the missionaries, he called it a hamferdite, not knowing exactly how to pronounce, spell or define the longer and more accurate word, since it was in none of the mission dictionaries. But according to Abner, few ships that had ever sailed the Atlantic knew such a congregation of evil, and his catalogue of what these sailors lounging idly on deck had perpetrated in their short and unspectacular lives was terrifying. The dramatic climax, of course, came when he announced to his startled missionaries and surprised ship’s crew that God had been at work even in this den of vice and that three souls had already been
saved, whereupon he produced Cridland, Mason and a beat-up old whaler with bad legs whose catalogue of sin actually surpassed Abner’s conjectures. Some of the old man’s friends, who had spent time ashore with him in Valparaiso, Canton and Honolulu, expected lightning to play upon the waves when he touched the Bible that Abner extended him. Captain Janders shuddered and said to his first mate, “Mark my words, Mister Collins, you’ll be up there next week.”
That Sunday the noonday meal was an unalloyed triumph. Captain Janders said it was one of the best sermons he had ever heard afloat, although he was satisfied that Reverend Hale must have been talking about some other ship, and Mister Collins confessed, “It’s a strange phenomenon, but no matter what the ship, the closer it gets to Cape Horn, the more religious everyone becomes. It’s as if all aboard sensed at last the futility of man in the face of God’s awful power. I’m not sure that I would be even a moderately Christian man, which I hold myself to be, if I had never rounded Cape Horn.” Captain Janders added, “I agree. No man by his own power could accomplish the transit we shall soon face.”
No comment could have pleased Abner more, for like all the missionaries he had been contemplating with some dread the trial they would encounter as Cape Horn approached, and although it still lay eight weeks in the future, he felt that he would make no mistake in undertaking reasonable preparations. He therefore said, “I have observed, Captain Janders, that you spend your Sundays reading …” He found it difficult to say the word, and hesitated.
“Novels?” Janders asked.
“Yes. Profane books. I was wondering, Captain Janders, if you would entertain it kindly if I were to give you, from the mission stores, several books of a more appropriate and edifying nature?”
“Richardson and Smollett are edifying enough for me,” Janders laughed.
“But when you have in your care some four dozen souls …”
“In those circumstances I rely on Bowditch and the Bible … in that order.”
“Do I understand that you would not take it kindly …”
“I would not,” Janders said stiffly.
“The mission family has decided,” Abner said abruptly, having talked with no one of this project, “that starting with today we shall hold both morning and afternoon services on deck, weather permitting.”
“Fine,” Janders said. Then, always eager to keep the young minister off balance, he asked, “By the way, how’s Mrs. Hale?”
“Poorly,” Abner said.
“I should think you would spend some time with her,” Janders suggested.
“I do,” Abner snapped. “I pray with her morning and night.”
“I meant, play games with her, or read her an interesting novel. Would you entertain it kindly if I were to offer you, from my own library, several novels of an entertaining nature?”
“We do not read novels,” Abner retaliated. “Especially not on Sundays.”
“In that case, when you do get around to seeing your wife, you can tell her that on Tuesday we’ll land at Brava, and she can walk ashore. It’ll do us all wonders.”
Jerusha was elated by this news, and on Monday, when the calmer waters in the lee of Cape Verde were reached, she ventured on deck for an hour and the sun diminished her pallor. On Tuesday, when the islands were clearly in sight, she clung to the railing, praying for the moment when she could step ashore, but she was to be sorely disappointed, for a stiff breeze came up offshore, followed by heavy low clouds, and even before the Thetis began to roll in deep troughs, it became apparent that to beat into Brava would be too difficult a task, whereas to run before the mounting storm would carry the little brig so far on its westward heading that any attempt to recover Brava would be wasteful. Nevertheless, Jerusha stood in the rain, praying that some miracle would enable the ship to make land, and it was not until Captain Janders himself passed and said, “We’re going to run before the wind, ma’am. There’ll be no Brava,” that she admitted sorry defeat. Then she discovered that she was very seasick, and began retching at the rail so that Janders shouted, “You, there! Take this poor woman below!”
It was a gloomy family that met that night in the swaying cabin for a supper of gruel and hard cheese. Half the missionaries were unable to leave their staterooms. The others wore bleak faces in recognition of the fact that a chance to step ashore had been missed, and that no other would present itself for many days. How lonely and mean the cabin seemed as the whale-oil lamp swung in the creaking night, as the latrine smelled up the fetid atmosphere, and as friends retched in new despair. Keoki, coming in with the food, said, “I would like to offer the evening prayer,” and in rich Hawaiian he praised the open ocean as compared to land, for on the former one was required to know God, whereas on land there were many diversions. Therefore, reasoned Keoki, it was better this night to be on the Thetis than to be in Brava.
Of all the listeners, only Abner knew enough Hawaiian to piece together the message, and he thought it so felicitous that he interpreted it for the mission family, and then he surprised everyone by standing and uttering his first prayer in Hawaiian. It was halting, but it was the native tongue of the islands, and it helped acquaint God with the strange tongue in which this family was to work.
ON THE FORTY-FIFTH DAY of the voyage, Monday, October 15, the groaning Thetis crossed the equator in brilliant sunshine and on a glassy sea. The first victim was Reverend Hale. Since the day was hot, Captain Janders casually suggested at noon that his passengers ought to wear old clothes, and not too many of them. When he was satisfied that no one was wearing his best, he winked at Keoki, who passed a signal aloft.
“Oh, Reverend Hale!” a voice cried down the hatchway. “Cridland wants to see you!”
Abner hurried from table, grasped the handrail leading aloft, and swung up the narrow ladder. He had gone only a few yards forward when he was completely drenched in a bucket of sea water thrown down from the shrouds. He gasped, looked about in dismay, and felt his muscles contracting in useless fury. But before he could speak, Mister Collins winked at him and said, “We’ve crossed the equator! Call Whipple!” And Abner was so startled by the experience that he found himself calling, “Brother Whipple! Can you come?”
There was a movement at the hatchway as Whipple ran into a full bucket of water. “Equator!” Abner giggled.
John wiped himself off, then looked up into the shrouds where two sailors were dizzy with delight and reaching for fresh buckets. On the spur of the moment Whipple shouted, “Whales!” and stood back as several passengers from below came storming up the ladder and into their initiation. Soon the deck was choked with laughing missionaries, and Captain Janders announced that the crew would now initiate the sailors who had not yet crossed the line. But when one of the young men who had doused Whipple came up for his diet of gruel, whale oil, soap and grease, John shouted, “Oh, no! I’m to feed this one!” And to everyone’s surprise he leaped into the middle of the fray, got himself roundly smeared with grease, and fed the laughing sailor, whereupon there was great hilarity and the captain ordered all hands an issue of rum, at which point the missionaries solemnly withdrew. An hour later Abner had visible proof of the horrors of ardent spirits, for Keoki Kanakoa begged him to come forward into the fo’c’s’l, where the old whaler who had accepted the Bible had somehow collected six or eight extra rations of grog and was now cursing vehemently and bashing his head into a bulkhead. With some difficulty Abner got him into his foul bunk and sat consoling him. When the man was sober enough to speak coherently, Abner asked, “Where is your Bible?”
“In the box,” the old whaler replied contritely.
“This one?”
“Yes.” Primly, Abner opened the box, ignored the filth and disarray, and lifted out the Holy Book.
“Some men do not deserve Bibles,” he said sternly, and left.
“Reverend! Reverend!” shouted the sailor. “Don’t do that! Please!” But Abner was already far aft.
The strange day ended with a sight of incomparab
le beauty, for from the west, heading to the coast of Africa, came a tall ship with many sails, out of the sunset, and the Thetis spoke to her and lowered a longboat to greet the stranger, taking mail which could be returned to Boston; and as the longboat prepared to stand off, Captain Janders, in the stern, shouted, “Whipple! They might appreciate prayers!” And John swung down into the boat, and all aboard the Thetis watched as their men rowed into the sunset to visit the strange, tall ship, so beautiful in the dusk.
Jerusha was brought on deck, and although she tried to control herself, fell into tears at the sight of this curious meeting of two ships in the first shadows of night. “My beloved companion,” she sighed, “it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Look how the sunset rests on the waters. The sea is a mirror.”
Amanda, not wishing to be alone at such a still moment, came to stand with the Hales and whispered, “It was almost unbearable, to see Brother Whipple rowing away like that. It’s the first time we’ve been separated. He has been my dear companion and close friend. How lucky we are to be spending our first days of marriage like this.”
But when the longboat returned to the Thetis, and when the tall ship had resumed its passage, with night upon it and the noiseless sea, Amanda saw that her husband sat in the prow biting his lip, while Captain Janders sat in the stern, riveted in hatred. Even the sailors, New England men all, were harshly silent, their mouths pursed into tight lines. Only Captain Janders spoke. “By God!” he cried. “At such moments I wish we were armed. I wish to Almighty God we had sent that damned foul thing to the bottom.” In fury he threw a handful of letters at the missionaries’ feet. “I would not entrust your letters to such a ship. A slaver.”
Later, John Whipple reported to the missionaries: “It was horrible. They had not secured the chains below, and you could hear them swinging in the swell. It was a dark ship. Abner, would you pray?” And in the hot cabin, on their first night across the equator, the missionaries prayed and Abner said simply, “Where there is darkness, Lord, allow the light to shine. Where there is evil, substitute goodness. But let us not concern ourselves only with distant evil. Remind us always that our first responsibility is the evil that occurs within our immediate environs. Lord, help us not to be hypocrites. Help us to do Thy work day by day.”